Channel 4 appoints Sinead Rocks as Managing Director Nations & Regions

5 April 2019

Channel 4 has appointed Sinead Rocks, currently the BBC’s Director of Education, as its new Managing Director, Nations & Regions. 

The new role of Managing Director, Nations & Regions will lead the delivery of Channel 4’s ‘4 All the UK’ strategy and will be the lead executive in its new National HQ in Leeds – working to establish this base and the new Creative Hubs in Glasgow and Bristol.   Rocks will report into Chief Commercial Officer, Jonathan Allan and will attend Executive group meetings, working with other executives and leaders across the business as a champion for the Nations & Regions and to deliver the commitments set out in the ‘4 All the UK’ strategy. 

Sinead will form a Nations and Regions senior team and take on a wider leadership role for all staff based in Channel 4’s new offices outside London, although all these employees will retain their direct reporting lines into current Executive functional responsibilities.

She will also work closely with the Commissioning teams, the Nations & Regions team, the Indie Growth Fund and 4Talent to develop new relationships and opportunities for Nations & Regions producers, talent and stakeholders – as Channel 4 increases its commitment to spend on regional production from 35% to 50% of main channel UK commissions by 2023, worth up to an additional £250m in total.  Director of Programmes Ian Katz and the commissioning team across the UK will continue to have responsibility for all content commissioning from the new bases.

Sinead has been the BBC’s Director of Education since 2016, based in Salford’s Media City, overseeing a range of content across TV, radio and online including the award winning Bitesize.  She played a key role in the BBC’s move to Salford – migrating the BBC’s Learning department to the North West site, and has been one of the senior executives based there. 

She started her career as a journalist at BBC Northern Ireland before joining BBC Children’s to work on the launch of the CBBC channel. She is a former editor of Newsround as well as Executive Producer for BBC Current Affairs where she headed up the Manchester network unit and led the team making content for The One Show, Panorama, documentaries for BBC Three and also launched the ‘Rip Off Britain’ franchise. 

Jonathan Allan said: “Sinead has an impressive track record of creative and organisational leadership, as well as a huge amount of experience of relocation through being part of the BBC’s move to Media City.  I’m thrilled she’s agreed to join Channel 4 as our new Managing Director, Nations & Regions and I know she’ll be a powerful advocate for our staff, new talent and the production sector outside of London.

Sinead Rocks said: “It’s a really exciting time to be joining Channel 4. Their Nations and Regions strategy is ambitious and compelling and I’m delighted that I’ll get to play a key role in bringing it to life and to work with the amazing talent that exists right across the UK.”

 

-ENDS-

 

Notes to editors:

Channel 4 announced in October 2018 that it had confirmed that Leeds would be the new National HQ alongside Glasgow and Bristol as its Creative Hubs. 

When fully implemented, Channel 4’s 4 All the UK strategy will result in over 300 Channel 4 jobs being created in the Nations & Regions, including key creative decision makers – responsible for commissioning Channel 4 content and programmes from producers right across the UK. 

The new bases are at the heart of Channel 4’s plan to attract and develop talent from across the UK, both on and off-screen and support the significant increase in the organisation’s Nations & Regions spend on creative content – from 35% to 50% of main channel UK commissions by 2023, worth up to £250m more in total.